This is why I won't take the late train.

I had an experience Friday night which is still echoing.

I had to work late because we were having a special event. The bus I needed to take stopped running at 7, so a coworker drove me to the Norwalk train station. It was 9 at night and I was waiting on a bench inside. The building was deserted, with no sound but the ticking clock. There was a calmness to the sense that I was the only one there.

Then, as I drew faces in my sketchbook, a man approached me. He must have been in his early to mid twenties. He had both an iPhone and a Tracfone. This immediately set off a red flag, since people involved in all kinds of creepy bullshit often carry both a regular cell and an untraceable one that’s easy to discard. He sat by me and started asking to see more of my drawings. I told him I was busy, but he wouldn’t leave me alone. He stared at me intently, leaning in closer.

I kept writing in the sketchbook, trying not to let my hand shake. He said, “I wrote a thousand journals in my head and I want to give them all to you.”

The man kept getting calls on his Tracfone. He intermittently walked across the room to talk to whoever was on the other line in a hushed voice. He then came back and continued to intrude with question after question, most of which I didn’t answer. The questions didn’t feel like they were hitting me; more like burrowing in. He offered no information about himself, and I didn’t ask. He demanded to know what I’d eaten that day. Where I lived. Where I was going, and how long my train ride would be. He asked if I had a boyfriend and I said, “I’m married.” He smirked and asked, “How are you enjoying that?”

I didn’t get up to leave because I knew he would follow me. I couldn’t say anything overtly angry because he would get violent. I could hear that threat as clearly as his breath. The tension pressed forward, ebbing and flowing in his lungs, at the whim of however I responded. I was at his whim. At any time he could snap the thin layer that solidified the air between us. There was a bulge in the pocket on his lower hip which was shaped exactly like a handgun. I was anchored to the chair, removed from the situation. I just watched it happen. As long as I kept him talking, he wasn’t raping me. As long as he stayed on that bench, I wasn’t being abducted. If I let him think about other things, he wouldn’t think about the gun resting against his leg. There was no one to run to if this conversation slipped off the track. It just kept barreling forward with me as the passenger.

This went on for half an hour.

He drew closer I distantly heard him say, “I came into your life for a reason. When you interact with somebody, you wanna get something out of them. I want to get something out of you. And I want to leave you with something. Every man has power, and women have power too. When you meet someone, you exchange that power and take it with you.”

If I could feel my skin, I think it would have been prickling.

He asked if I like blue. I answered, “Are you asking because everyone likes blue?” He reached under my bench, took a blue Skittle from the floor, and said, “I asked because I saw this here. I thought it was a sign.”

He peered back at the sketchbook and said, “I want to read your writing.”

I shook my head. He asked why not and I answered, “I don’t know you.”

He sighed, “That’s deep.”

Everything he was saying would have been hilariously trite, like a parody of a cheesy pickup artist, if it wasn’t carrying a bullet. He went on, “I saw you on the bus earlier. I saw you twice today, so I do know you.”

A darting glance at the clock told me my train was on its way. This shook me out of the numbness. I started to get up, and had to force myself to slow down and look calm.

He asked, “Do you want to see me again?”

I said no. He replied, “Doesn’t matter. I know what bus you take, so I will see you again. And again and again, and I’ll keep moving closer. And then I’ll be a part of your life.”

My legs were finally running and I disappeared behind the train door, heart pummeling, not looking back.

I never told him my name or where I work, but he knows from my name tag and the words on my shirt. And now I reach for my pepper spray and scour every direction when I step onto the bus. I’m never going back to that train station again.